We would all like to believe that affairs are the refuge of the discontented, that only people in unhappy marriages cheat. But “happy,” it turns out, is not a sufficient antidote to affair. We may be in a golden age of marriage, when elites at least are more likely to...

Online Dating & Relationships The Pew Internet and American Life Project General public attitudes towards online dating have become much more positive in recent years, and social networking sites are now playing a prominent role when it comes to...

Looking for a reason to stay married? Here it is. These pro-marriage research findings are all in one document. I found it interesting that over five studies "analyzing different populations find that married men

(especially married fathers) have lower testosterone levels than dosimilar men who never-married or divorced." Of note, co-habitating men had the same results. Apparently being near a woman lowers testosterone.

In an online survey with two cohorts (2009 and 2011) of undergraduates in dating relationships, we examined how attachment was related to communication technology use within romantic relationships. Participants reported on their attachment style and frequency of in-person communication as well as phone, text messaging, social network site (SNS), and electronic mail usage with partners. Texting and SNS communication were more frequent in 2011 than 2009. Attachment avoidance was related to less frequent phone use and texting, and greater email usage. Electronic communication channels (phone and texting) were related to positive relationship qualities, however, once accounting for attachment, only moderated effects were found. Interactions indicated texting was linked to more positive relationships for highly avoidant (but not less avoidant) participants. Additionally, email use was linked to more conflict for highly avoidant (but not less avoidant) participants. Finally, greater use of a SNS was positively associated with intimacy/support for those higher (but not lower) on attachment anxiety. This study illustrates how attachment can help to explain why the use of specific technology-based communication channels within romantic relationships may mean different things to different people, and that certain channels may be especially relevant in meeting insecurely attached individuals’ needs.

I can confirm the temperature because I have known the extremes: a cold marriage, filled with contempt and misery. A lukewarm marriage, perhaps the worst, filled with idle days, stagnant affection and distant intimacy. We have lived every season.

A white, puffy dress. Eternal love. A joint tax return. Marriage means something different to everyone and has changed over time and across cultures. Alex Gendler traces the history of getting hitched, providing insights on polygamy, same-sex unions and even marriage between the dead and the living.

When I was a child, I used to marvel at the sound of the frogs in our neighborhood creek. Perched on the rocks, they would find each other and croak out an exhilarating symphony of amphibious songs. Meanwhile, their tadpole offspring swam in the cool flowing water below, their parents seemingly oblivious to their offsprings’ experience.

I wondered then, as I still do today as a physician and mental health educator, how our human lives entail our gathering together to voice our own thoughts and aspirations, intentions and emotions. What makes us different as mammals from our amphibian and even reptilian cousins is something beyond just the hair on our bodies and the warmth of our blood. We mammals share attachment, the need for a close relationship between parent and offspring to connect and protect, to soothe and attune. The magic of attachment is that our children internalize our patterns of communication with them, shaping the very structure of their developing brains as they move from the safe haven of our love to set out into the world from the launching pad of home. While the tadpoles do fine without their parents’ care, as mammals, our human family shares this need for an attachment bond. And as a very special kind of primate, we have the unusual habit (actually more like a key feature) of our caregiving: we distribute the responsibility for the care of our young to more than just the mother.

As Sarah Hrdy beautifully describes in Mothers and Others, we mammals have “alloparenting” or “other-parenting” in which we provide trusted others to care for our precious infants. This cooperative child-rearing, Hrdy suggests, is the key to our adaptive nature. We give birth to our children, share their care through collaborative communication, and then build cooperative communities that extend this interconnected way of living. Our youth grow into their adolescence, getting ready to push away from their parents and the solid home base from which they now can go out and explore the world. Relationships are the defining feature of being human. As Robin Dunbar suggests, the more complex our social lives, the more complex our brains. In our Foundation for Psychocultural Research/UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, over the past decade we have been examining how the relationships we have within cultures—the repeating patterns of communication we have that link us together in families, communities, and societies—actually shape the structure and function of the brain. These studies suggest that our experiences shape our neural architecture—and that our social relationships are one of the most important forms of experience that literally form who we are. And the very essence of a relationship is communication. Communication is what connects one person to another, or one person to many. You can see how this essential collaborative nature of ours would be a natural backdrop to making communication amongst members of a group so vital for the group’s survival. If we could sense the inner state of others through verbal language and through the non-verbal signals of eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, touch, posture, and the timing and intensity of responses, we could then link our minds, connecting the core of our inner worlds, and making a more integrated whole from the sum of many individuals. That’s likely how our relationships within groups allowed us to not only survive, but ultimately to thrive. Moving beyond the important parent-child relationship of our mammalian history, this human feature of cooperation propelled our need for complex communication and complex brain architecture into fast forward. The result for all of us is the centrality of relationships in human life. Now comes another amazing twist to the story. As our brains took on the need to connect to others, we developed the neural real estate to examine our own sense of identity. That’s right—it appears that relationships came first, and self-reflection came next! Relationships first. Elaborated by language and made intricate by socially-needed empathic skills to sense and comprehend the internal intentions and meanings of others, we now could examine in thought and feeling what an “I” might be, and reflect and think about what a “you” was not only in real here-and-now interactions but in concept, across time, and across contexts. I could connect to you, and you and I could form a “we.” And all of this we could reflect upon from the past, sense it in the present, and make plans for the future. With such a centrality of relationships in forming our evolutionary history and in forming our very identity—individually and as a human species—it might not surprise you to hear (or be reminded) that of all the factors in human life that predict the best positive outcomes, supportive relationships are number one. These research-proven findings include how long we live, the health of our bodies, the well-being of our minds, and the happiness we experience in life. Relationships are the most important part of our having well-being in being human. It’s that simple. And it’s that important. As a clinician and parent and an educator, I am excited to let others know of how vitally important having supportive relationships are for our individual well-being. But there’s another aspect of relationships that is also clear from recent science: The more we connect with others and embrace the reality of our interconnected nature, the more we’ll live with meaning, compassion, equanimity, and purpose. Recent studies led by Barbara Fredrickson even show that with such a life of what the Greek’s called eudemonia, we will even have a more optimal way that our genes will be regulated to help us fight off chronic disease. I like to think of these factors as the way we care for our internal identity as a “me” while also embracing the reality of our interconnected identity as a “we.” A simple way to remember this important integrated identity is thinking of ourselves as a “MWe”, a fundamentally related being that we can be proud to call human.

According to the BDT, trust is composed of three bases (reliability, emotional, and honesty) by three domains: cognitive/affective (i.e., trust beliefs), behavior-dependent trust, and behavior-enacting trust (i.e., trustworthiness).

Some people are upbeat to talk with. They feel "warm." Whether they are your boss, your employee or colleague, your friend, family members or loved ones; these folks feel safe to share with, and, like sunshine, radiate good vibes. Their positivity makes you want to talk with them more. At the same time the warmth that they emit enhances the pleasure that they themselves experience in relationships.

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